Science and Public Policy, volume 18, number 5, October 1991, pages 301-309, Beech Tree Publishing, 10 Watford
Close, Guildford, Surrey GUI 2EP, England.
Developing skills
Expert systems as a medium for knowledge
transfer to less developed countries
Evans E Woherem
Expert systems (ESs) are currently considered
the most commercially successful products of
Artificial Intelligence (AJ) research. They are
now being used in different sectors of society to
enhance the decision-making and problem-sol-
ving of experts in various domains.
Firstly, this paper suggests that developing
nations can use this new technology 1.0 capture
and redistribute knowledge/expertise, and so
bring about more availability ofexpert knowledge
in their organisations and increase the quality of
their decision-making and problem-solving. By
consulting an Expert System, inexperienced per-
sonnel in the less developed countries can perform
new tasks or their existing tasks more proficiently.
Secondly, the role of implicit (tacit) knowledge in
expertise/skill is examined, and how this elusive
ingredient of knowledge can be developed or in-
creased by the use of ESs is explained.
Dr Evans E Woherem is at Lloyd's Register, Performance
Technology, 29 Wellesley Road, Croydon, Surrey CRG 2AT,
England_ Tel: (081) 6814040_
Science and Public Policy October 1991
XPERT SYSTEMS (ESs) are new forms oj
E computer systems with an increasing range
of applications within the different domaim
of expert decision-making and problem-solving in
all sectors of society. Many are employed today in
for instance, medical diagnosis, geological pros-
pecting, predicting crop disease, mass-spectrogram
interpretation, accounting, finance, personnel and
management. They are mostly used in the western
world, but have potential beneficial implications
for the developing nations in their need for more
experts to help in their development efforts, and as
agents for knowledge transfer from the developed
countries (DCs).
That group of countries characterised by pov-
erty, low income, maldistribution of income, high
birth rates, high death rates, over-population,
poorly developed financial, administrative and pol-
itical institutions, high levels of unemployment,
agricultural shortages, and1so on, are referred to by
the United Nations as the less developed nations
(or LDCs).
ESs can be used by LDCs to supplement the
acute shortage of professionals, skilled performers
and experts which they still suffer today. At pres-
ent, tasks requiring expertise in LDCs are carried
out by personnel with mostly text book knowledge
rather than those with practical experience. As a
result, most projects are inefficiently or badly
planned, designed and carried out; in fact they are
forced to rely on outside consultants/experts most-
ly from the DCs to carry out activities requiring
expertise.
ESs can provide professional support to, for
instance, technical engineers trying to make pro-
0302-3427/91/050301-9 US$03.00 © Beech Tree Publishing 1991 301
ESs in knowledge transfer to LDCs
fessional decisions in the design of technical sys-
tems/machines. They assist inexperienced engin-
eers to perform more proficiently, by encap-
sulating solution constraints which enable them to
identify and prevent user mistakes. ESs can en-
hance the productivity/performance of inexperi-
enced users, not improve their knowledge, and
when designed to improve skill, can also be used as
a means for knowledge transfer.
According to Kelsey (1989), ESs can be used in
the LDCs, for example in the water supply sector,
by planners to provide a source of necessary basic
engineering knowledge, and by design engineers to
ensure that all the technical and non-technical
factors affecting design decisions are taken into
account. He goes on to describe such an ES in the
water supply sector:
"Treat, a prototype expert system for the pre-
liminary design of a drinking water system,
has been implemented using the Savoir ex-
pert system shell, using the combinatory se-
lection approach. This is where a design
problem is divided into components which
are selected and combined at a strategic level
and then designed in detail at the technical
level... Each component is screened in terms
of its appropriateness given the answers to
the sets of questions which together indicate
the ability of the community to maintain the
component, and to set the questions. The
remaining components are then selected
either individually or in combination, de-
pending on their effectiveness in improving
the water supply. When all the components
have been selected or rejected the system
presents a report listing the recommended
combination to the user."
This paper examines the characteristics of the
LDCs and their science and technology (S&T)
needs, the ES technology (its nature and uses) and
then the potential benefits of ESs to LDCs.
Problems of development
The LDCs belong to what is known today as the
third world. Despite the debates over the defini-
tion, there exists some agreement as to the charac-
teristics of most of the countries in this group. As
pointed out above they are all relatively very poor,
with low per capita income, high population
growth, low level of literacy, and so on. Also, they
all suffer from inability to develop and use the
technologies that will enable them to derive more
economic value from their environment and thus
help enhance their level of economic development
and standard of living.
It is widely accepted that the more technologi-
cally developed a country is, the more it is able to
302
There seems to be a high correlation
between technology and the ability to
use it to exploit the environment, and
a country's standard of living and
power
meet its economic and political needs. A look
around the world shows that the one thing the DCs
have that the LDCs do not have, that gives them a
higher standard of living and unequal economic,
political and military power, is technology. There
seems to be a high correlation between technology
and the ability to use it to exploit the environment,
and a country's standard of living and power.
LDCs' response to acquiring technological ca-
pability has so far been through written texts/rote
learning of areas of knowledge in schools and
universities, and importation or transfer of physical
technology artefacts from the DCs. Technology is
largely imported through bilateral agreements, and
the multi-national corporations (MNCs). The cost
of buying these technologies from the DCs is pro-
hibitive for already poor LDCs. Their bargaining
power is weak, so they end up paying more every
year for the technologies they buy.
These technologies normally do not suit local
resources and environmental conditions. They are
normally underutilised and inefficiently used. The
reason for this is LDCs' weak technological back-
ground. This is leading some to advocate that these
countries should not seek independent technologi-
cal capability, but should buy technology from the
DCs and use it efficiently for development. These
dependency theorists advocate technology import-
ation (the purchase and use of a machine produced
abroad) instead of technology transfer (the trans-
fer of the full knowledge, explicit and implicit, of
the technology) from the DCs to the LDCs.
After the 1970s, with the rapid industrialisation
of Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore,
South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and Latin
American countries such as Brazil, Mexico and
Argentina (all of which initially had a weak tech-
nological base) the argument that LDCs have too
weak a technological capability became untenable.
Instead it carne to be understood that the problem
is in the process/strategy of adoption.
It became apparent that LDCs can grow tech-
nologically, if only they can make the right choice
of policy that will suit them given their different
socio-cultural situations. The problem is to deter-
mine the obstacles that militate against their suc-
cessful technological take off. Instead of con-
centrating on how to get the money to import
technology, attention has shifted to the process of
mastering and upgrading transferred or imported
Science and Public Policy October 1991

technologies from abroad, which it is now realised
do not come with implicit managerial, organisa-
tional and tacit components. Imported tech-
nologies do not transplant S&T capability into
LDCs, because they are often too sophisticated to
be operated, improved upon, maintained and/or
repaired by local personnel, and therefore, engen-
der more technological and economic dependence
on theDCs.
Nature of expert systems
ESs are computer programs which mimic the per-
formance of a human expert in limited areas of
expertise (Barr, Feigenbaum and Cohen, 1981).
They are built to assist human experts or to be used
by the less experienced (or novices) in areas (or
domains) of knowledge. The ES technology is the
most practically valuable AI technique currently
available in the market place and is in use in an
ever-widening number of commercial applications.
According to Ovum Ltd (1988) there are hundreds
of organisations currently "doing serious develop-
ment work on expert systems in the UK", including
GEe, BP, Shell, British Aerospace, British Gas,
leI, IeL, Unilever, British Telecom and the
Atomic Energy Authority.
ESs make use of a stored representation of the
knowledge and experience of experts working in
well-defined areas of knowledge. They usually rep-
resent this knowledge in the form of rules, and
sometimes as some sort of description of important
characteristics relevant to the problem. They can
generate explanations for their 'reasoning', answer
why and how they reached their decision and in
general hold their information in a way that is easily
understood.
They capture not only factual but also
judgemental knowledge. They are capable of quali-
tative reasoning in 'fuzzy' areas of problem-solving
and decision-making, such as when the informa-
tion is incomplete or uncertain. ESs are mainly
used to solve problems that are not solvable with
conventional algorithmic techniques, such as in
design, planning and diagnosis (see, for instance,
Barr, Feigenbaum and Cohen, 1981; Waterman,
1983; Bonnet, Haton & Truonc-Ngoc, 1988).
They are usually designed with the help of
human experts who solve a range of test problems
and describe their thought processes as they pro-
ceed. The programmer (in this case a knowledge
engineer) attempts to transfer the knowledge and
methods of reasoning of the expert into a computer
program.
It is impossible to complete the building of an
ES in a single development phase to incorporate
all the expertise it requires. It is normal to progress
through a series of prototypes each one becoming
more comprehensive and sophisticated. The in-
itial, and in many cases most time-consuming, task
Science and Public Policy October 1991
ESs in knowledge transfer to LDCs
ESs have been used in several areas
of problem-solving: interpretation,
planning, monitoring, diagnosis,
assistance in design/development,
control/optimisation,
education/training and design
evaluation
is concerned with the structuring of the knowledge
and rules that cover routine basic activities often
considered as trivial by the human expert. There-
after the system is made to gradually incorporate
the more expert tasks by being continually updated
to reflect new knowledge/information.
Areas of application
The types of problems currently addressed by ES
technology are discussed in this section to enable
the reader get a feel for its various uses. Due to
their ability to tackle problems within areas that
require knowledge and experience (abilities which
conventional computer programs do not have), it
is generally believed that ESs can assist many cat-
egories of workers in different areas of work. Ac-
cording to Bereel (1987), ESs can be (and have
been) used to do the following types of problem-
solving.
• Interpretation: ESs can be designed to look at
data and deduce their meaning, relationships
and consequences.
• Planning: ESs can propose courses of action
under different scenarios.
• Monitoring: ESs can compare and evaluate
what is observed against a planned or expected
behaviour.
• Diagnosis: ESs can analyse system performance
so as to highlight malfunctions and identify the
cause. I
• Assistance in design/development: ESs can as-
sist in the design of objects with the aid of certain
cons train ts/guidelines.
• Control/optimisation: ESs can be made to diag-
nose, debug, repair and monitor the behaviour
of systems.
• Education/training: ESs can be used to provide
computer based training to students.
• Design evaluation: ESs can assist in the evalu-
ation of designs against defined specifications.
There are currently many ESs also in everyday use
in solving problems within the areas of educa-
tion/training, engineering and manufacturing,
computing, banking and finance, law, marketing
303
ESs in knowledge transfer to LDCs
and advertising, insurance, medicine, agriculture,
geology and chemistry/chemicals.
General benefits
The general benefits of ESs are as follows:
• Consistency: ESs can standardise the problem-
solving carried out within an area of activity thus
achieving a consistent outcome.
• Portability: ESs enable the knowledge of an
expert(s) to be transported from one location to
another (as surrogate expertise).
• Permanence: Sickness, resignation or retire-
ment can result in loss of expertise to the organi-
sation. To safeguard against this, ESs can help
organisations to retain expertise - especially in
cases where it is very difficult to recruit/train
experts in the area.
• Auditability: ESs can enable organisations to
audit the knowledge, problem-solving and deci-
sion-making in identifiable areas of activity they
engage in.
• Aexibility: ESs can enable an organisation to
respond more re~.dily to changes in its environ-
ment, such as the market, labour force or
resources.
• Effectiveness: ESs can help an organisation to
be better able to achieve its objectives, and re-
lease experts from more routine tasks into areas
not covered by ESs.
• Efficiency: ESs can enable an organisation to
carry out its functions with a better-than-aver-
age input-to-output ratio (thus gaining an opti-
mal return with less input investment).
ESs can also be designed to help organisations:
• To develop a 'knowledge bank' (a store) of the
composite knowledge of their members. The
components of the knowledge bank could be in
the form of: strategic planning/decision-making
knowledge; rare skills/expertise archiving;
knowledge gained from in-house experts; or
knowledge gained from exit interviews of the
experts leaving the organisation (Beerel, 1987).
• To explain statutory regulations, standards/
codes of design or compliance procedures. This
is very advisable in cases where the organisation
depends greatly on its employee being conver-
sant with these factors.
• To develop competitive edge. This will result
from the fact that ESs can lead to the improve-
ment of cost structure, the reduction of costs,
the development of some new products/pro-
cesses, and the improvement of marketing/dis-
tribution differentiation. Using ESs to achieve a
competitive adval1tage is seen potentially as one
of the most exciting sides to its commercial use
today.
304
Practical benefits to LDCs
As pointed out earlier, one thing the DCs have in
common which the LDCs do not have is the ability
to use and develop sophisticated science and tech-
nology; this ability is dependent on knowledge. The
LDCs lack the knowledge/expertise with which to
design and develop the new technologies they
could use to increase the economic exploitation of
their resources, to plan/administer their health ser-
vice, their agriculture, their industry, their public
administration, their communications infrastruc-
ture and their social services. It is imperative for a
country to establish a functional system of plan-
ning, administration and monitoring of its policies
and developmental objectives, in order to be able
to develop its resources and enhance its techno-
logical and economic development.
LDCs are faced with the problem of how to
gather, store, communicate and analyse data/infor-
mation and the problem of skills shortages - es-
pecially expert-level skills. This means that many
companies and government parastatals use inade-
quate personnel to plan and run their institutions
or depend on imported experts for the expertise to
run some institutions and to operate, maintain and
implement some machines. Most of the indigenous
personnel sent out for further studies at home or
abroad do not have the years of practical experi-
ence needed to be a solid expert within a problem
domain, and therefore are not able to tackle most
problems that require expertise in their countries.
Import of established ESs, and systems such as
computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided
instruction (CAl) can help in imparting skills, ex-
pert knowledge and education to LDCs' person-
nel. ESs can provide specialised advice at just the
cost of the computer system. They can be used to
provide expert help in public administration,
health, finance, agriculture, infrastructure and
education. They can be used to handle, interpret
and analyse large amounts of data which national
planning calls for. They therefore can be used to
improve the quality of decision-making and the
operation of public and private sector
organisations. .
ESs will thus aid planning as well as improve the
quality of decisions. However, to achieve this, the
choice of applications must match the develop-
ment priorities set by the government and have a
ESs will aid planning as well as
improve the quality of deciSions, but
to achieve this the choice of
applications must match the
priorities set by the government and
have a high development impact
Science and Public Policy October 1991

high development impact. It is advisable for gov-
ernments to consider application areas on criteria
based on their national developmental objectives
and strategy.
As ESs are easily transferable from one organi-
sation/culture to another, LDCs can benefit by
utilising them to provide expert decisions in public
and private organisations and within professional
domains of expertise.
Action for LDCs
LDCs can buy some of the existing off-the-shelf
ESs already being marketed in the DCs. Some of
these systems (those within the scientific and en-
gineering domains) can be bought and used in all
organisations and cultures solving the same prob-
lems without modification. The reason is that the
items, concepts and axioms of these domains are
well structured, defined and empirically testable
and also because there is a consensus as to what
constitutes knowledge in those domains.
On the other hand, systems within the area of
management and the social sciences, will require
fine tuning when taken to another country, to
make them meet local conditions, knowledge,
styles, differences, procedures, and so on. For
example, the PARRYS ES used in the area of
personnel management is now being used (with
some minor modifications) by many organisations
in Southeast Asia and Latin America, even though
it was built by a UK firm and with the knowledge
and experience of some UK experts in the domain.
LDCs can arrange with an expert anywhere in
the world to have his/her knowledge elicited for
encapsulation into an ES they will use in their
country. In other words, ESs can enable devel-
oping nations to have at their disposal, some of the
problem-solving and decision-making knowledge
of experts located in other countries if they cannot
find one in their own country.
They can use ESs as a tool for increasing/redis-
tributing knowledge in fields where there is scarcity
of experts or in locations where most of the prac-
titioners would not want to work (for instance in
rural areas). They can be used by the less-experi-
enced or the inexpert to reach the same level of
decision-making as do the experts.
However, end users have to have enough experi-
ence to enable them to interpret the information
from ESs. The end users must provide some of the
common sense, cultural and tacit knowledge which
ESs do not have.
Using an ES and hoping to acquire a skill from
it is like hoping to learn a skill from a do it yourself
(DIY) book. It is almost impossible to acquire a
skill in this way unless you have some underlying
skills, probably from everyday life, that would en-
able you to interpret and complete the knowledge
from the written text. One can assemble a bed,
Science and Public Policy October 1991
ESs in knowledge transfer to LDCs
There are two types oC knowledge
required to become an expert: the
theoretical knowledge oC axioms and
first principles gained Crom an
institution and text books, and that
gained through apprenticeship
chair, table, book shelf, or install a computer sys-
tem, from reading a DIY book, but not learn per-
manent carpentry and computing skills from it.
Nature of human expertise
What is meant by saying that somebody is an 'ex-
pert'? It means that the person is a knowledgeable
individual that is able to solve problems in a par-
ticular domain that many others will not be able to.
It is the capability to perform, consistently, very
well in a discernible area of problem-solving and
decision-making to the point that others acknowl-
edge the person as an expert in the domain. So,
although a futurist might be of a less expert domain
than sayan archaeologist, in some sense we can
also say that he is an expert.
What is the nature of knowledge? Gill (1988a)
explains it thus:
"Human knowledge is the product of social
and cultural milieu, and skills are gained
through practical experience ... human
knowledge .. .is made up of 'tacit', 'familiar'
and propositional knowledge. 'Tacit' knowl-
edge is that which is difficult to express. It is
gained through our social and cultural inter-
actions in society and our particular area of
work."
There are two types of knowledge required to
become an expert. First, is the knowledge of the
axioms, laws and tirst principl~s of the domain from
an institution of learning and text books. This
knowledge gives an understanding of the general
theories of the domain, but will not enable the
possessors of it to solve real life problems. Dreyfus
and Dreyfus (1986) point out that the five stages
to expertise are 'novice', 'advanced beginner',
'competent performer', 'proficient performer', and
'expert performer'.
Second, is the knowledge gained through ap-
prenticeship. In this case, the 'student' still goes
through the five stages to expertise, and, when
expert, behaves as if he/she understands the first
principles or theories behind the problem-solving.
But the ability to resort to general theories or first
principles is part of what makes somebody an
305
ESs in knowledge transfer to LDCs
expert.
This means that people that perform very
expertly through learning the 'how to' alone, by
observing their master, are skillful (and not expert)
performers. A true expert has both skill in the
domain and expertise. He has enough training
within the domain regarding its axioms, laws and
first principles, and can resort to them when he
encounters a novel problem. This implies that an
expert is also a skillful performer, whereas a skillful
performer is not necessarily an expert.
So experts have both explicit (theoretical)
knowledge and implicit (experiential) knowledge
of their domain. Some knowledge, such as heuris-
tics (or rules of thumb), which although perceived
as intuitive by experts, are in fact explicit. Experts
find it difficult to verbalise their implicit knowl-
edge: when they try to, they resort to the rules or
first principles of the domain.
Potential for knowledge transfer
Knowledge transfer to an LDC must include both
concrete knowledge and tacit knowledge. LDCs
are still having problems with how to bring about
sustainable S&T transfer. This is because they use
only written texts and physical technology import
(Figure 1), which enable only the transfer of ex-
plicit knowledge, while implicit knowledge is lost.
Text books do not provide practice within problem
contexts and situations. The LDCs should under-
p.
KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE
I I
Explicit
~ support the user in solving high level problems. ESs
7l
Knowledge
Channel
Implicit
Knowledge
I (Lost)
Written texts
Rote learning
Physical technology
transfer
Figure 1. Incomplete knowledge transfer
r-__~__ OW_L_E_DG_E__ ~J Ir-__~__ OW_L_ED_G_E____
Explicrr ~I
Knowledge
~ Channel
ImpliCit
Knowledge
L-------~I I' - - - - - - -
ApprenticE:!'Ihip
Practical Experience
(E:>e:pert SysteT;ns)
Figure 2. Complete knowledge transfer
306
stand the role of inarticulable knowledge in com-
plete knowledge transfer, and so, should produce
policies, backed up with the necessary will/action,
that will help bring about the type of economic,
industrial and S&Tsocio-cultural world view, para-
digm and growth needed to acquire and sustain
S&T, through practical experiences, learning and
setting of goals.
In a condition of complete knowledge transfer
(Figure 2) both explicit and implicit knowledge are
transferred from the people of one country (A) to
another (B). The channels of the knowledge tra~­
fer have traditionally been through apprenticeship
to a skilled or expert performer, or through practi-
cal experience in the domain over a period of time.
LDCs have been grappling with how to acquire the
knowledge necessary for a sustainable S&T take-
off. They find it difficult to make the appropriate
decisions that will enable them go through the
learning curve and acquire the necessary practical
experience. Meanwhile, the DCs are reaching new
S&T heights, and thus are widening the gap in S&T
and the standard of living between them and the
LDCs.
ES technology has the ability to bridge this in-
creasing S&T knowledge/ability gap and so enable
the LDCs to start acquiring the latest S&T knowl-
edge without necessarily going through the learn-
ing curve required in the DCs. ESs can be used to
solve real life problems thus helping to provide
expert solutions and practical experience/
knowledge.
ESs can enable less experienced/inexpert per-
sonnel from the LDCs to solve expert level prob-
.R
lems, only if they are designed to improve skills.
ESs can do this by being able to adjust to the level
Explicit of knowledge of the user, learn new things and
Knowledge
ImpliCIT can thus help the user to increase his/her skill in a
Knowledge domain. The combination of using the machine for
expert problem-solving and learning experience
would provide the user with the learning curve and
practical experience required to gain expertise.
The design of ESs for this purpose is discussed
later.
The implication of this is that/ ESs can be a
medium/instrument that will enable the LDCs,
with careful strategic planning, to leapfrog devel-
opment and to attain a higher level of S&T soph-
istication. The LDCs should have a plan of how to
~ use this technology to help them achieve their
Explicit economic and technological objectives and there-
Knowledge
fore to target them to strategic areas in which they
Implicit
require expertise according to their development
Knowledge objectives. ESs should be used as aids to managers,
government officials and professionals within spe-
cific industries mapped out by the government.
If ESs are built with a paradigm that aims to
enable them to teach skills, and understand and
co-operate with the users then they would be use-
ful as agents of knowledge/skills transfer to the
Science and Public Policy October 1991

Present ESs take over the
knowledgeable job practices and the
element of job control from the user,
who becomes a mere transducer of
decisions made by the system: this
leaves little room for knowledge
transfer
LDCs.
The knowledge of science and technology in a
country has its dimensions inextricably linked to
the culture, social framework, organisations and
paradigms. LDCs' graduates with degrees from
Universities in the DCs still find it difficult to in-
itiate a scientific and technological revolution or to
even bring about major scientific or technological
breakthroughs in their domains when they go back
to their countries: to do so requires full knowledge
of their domain - including the socio-cultural
dimensions of the knowledge.
It has to be pointed out that present ESs come
with embedded western rationalist ethos, culture,
language and procedures. This could be useful (or,
at least, not harmful) to engineering and scientific
fields, but not for areas such as national planning,
management and social sciences where many com-
plex, conflicting and unstructured variables are
involved.
New ES design paradigm
The LDCs, while able to make use of present ESs
to tackle real life problems in areas in which they
have a shortage of experts, should also realise that
present ESs, built from a rationalist, control
oriented and Tayloristic ethos/paradigm, deskill.
Present ESs are designed to capture factual,
explicit rules, ignoring the tacit personal and socio-
cultural elements of skill. They take over the
knowledgeable job practices and the element of
job control from the user, who becomes a mere
transducer of decisions made by the ESs. The im-
plication of this design paradigm is that it leaves
little room for knowledge transfer.
Explanations of the reasoning are often based
on a mere listing of the rules used during the
consultation session. The user is thus not helped to
learn the first principles and tacit elements of the
domain. Although little knowledge is transferred
by present ESs, they can still be used to improve
the performance of inexperienced staff, and this in
itself is beneficial to the LDCs. (It should be borne
in mind, although this is not the technology that is
being discussed here, that Computer Based Train-
ing systems can also be used to improve the knowl-
Science and Public Policy October 1991
ESs in knowledge transfer to LDCs
edge and performance of inexperienced personnel
in the LDCs).
ESs are designed today, as reflected in the ones
studied in some British organisations (Woherem,
1988), to capture human reasoning. Knowledge
engineers go to experts, extract their expertise, and
then divest it onto a computer - as an expert
system. Thus, what we have is a computer system
that mimics the problem-solving and decision-
making of human experts, so that when used by
humans, it takes over the actual decision-:making,
leaving the human end user redundant. "
The paradigm used in constructing most ..ESs
today is the consultation one. The human user
seeks the advice of the ESs as of a real expert (as
patients do doctors, and clients do lawyers and
accountants). In this case, the ESs have the exper-
tise not the users, while the human expert is turned
into the client. There are other subsets, for in-
stance many monitoring or real time decision-
making ESs, or even embedded ESs in larger
systems, which do not have a user interface at all.
With better design and use of ESs, they can also
enhance skill/expertise. To those that point out
that " .. .if one builds a knowledge-based system
with all the relevant data and rules input into it for
a particular field of expertise, any novice will be
able to use the machine effectively and be able to
make decisions as effectively as any experts", Gill
(1988b) reminds that" .. .learning can only be done
by doing".
Interactive systems
According to Rosenbrock (1986), there are alter-
native ways of designing ESs, so as to make use of
the interactive powers of computing and AI tech-
niques, and thus enable the user to be in control of
the 'when' and 'how' of hislher domain. Rosen-
brock pleads that alternative design choices should
not be eliminated through what he termed "Lu-
shall Hills Effect". That is, we should not, in design-
ing intellectual tasks, make the same mistake we
made with manual work, by ignoring alternatives.
According to Rosenbrock, computers are good
in numerical computation and analysis. Humans
are good in pattern recognition, understanding
complexity and intuitive design paths; of prime
importance is to accept the knowledge/expertise of
experts, and to give them a computing environ-
ment in which to exercise their skill. Thus system-
human interface will be more interactive and
flexible than is the case today.
Rosenbrock shows how such human-centred
systems could be achieved by a CAD system which
the designer can use to gauge speed, stability, sen-
sitivity of the system, and so on. Here the end user's
tacit knowledge is accepted and enhanced. Alter-
natively, there is the design approach embodied in
today's ESs, in which expertise is subdivided and
307
ESs in knowledge transfer to LDCs
codified into the expert system, so that all the
decisions are made by the system.
A future ES could be designed so that the expert
user can interact with it as a colleague; so tha~ he
can ask for its advice just as he does hi!. colleagues.
The aim should be to produce a consultation be-
tween 'equals', in which the advice giver (the other
expert) exchanges views, leaving the advice seeker
to reach the decisions himself.
The ES as a colleague/advisor should only give
the user the facts he/she seeks and proddings that
will help in his/her creativity. The initiative should
be with the human expert who knows the problems
and what kind of advice to seek from the expert
system; the latter should only advise accordingly.
The expert system should be able to tell the
human when she/he is not considering some prob-
lem-solving paths, or some parameters that might
lead to a better solution. In this way, the expert-ES
interface becomes one that is more intrinsically
rewarding to humans. It enriches them and adds to
their skills. It will enable them to continue working
more as 'architects' instead of as 'bees'.
So future ESs should be more interactive and
should allow the expert user to provide the initia-
tive, to make schedules and decisions. It should,
perhaps, do the low level 'data-crunching', answer
the expert's specific queries, not control the initia-
tive and make the decision for the end user.
To the inexpert user, it can act as a teacher,
giving the principies and heuristics of the domain
at a more detailed level, that will enable the user's
understanding and experience to increase so that
he/she, in the future, progresses to using it as a
colleague. Present ESs allow inexpert end users to
solve problems but the future systems would teach
them in such a way that they develop into experts,
and then progress to using the system as a
colleague.
The ES should also be able to watch over the
shoulder of the expert, by 'reading' the decisions
made and dropping a computer-generated note,
saying, for example, "you decided A because you
did not consider 1 and/or 2 and/or 3 and/or [n]
factors, which might suggest that B or C is the
condition or the solution".
ESs can be customised for different types of end
user, permitting different interaction/discourse
strategies that will enable it to interact as
teacher/consultant or advisor/colleague. ESs thus
designed should be able to recognise the type of
user, and thereby decide which mode to use. To
customise the ES requires more understanding of
human communication and expert to inexpert
communication. It also requires an understanding
of how to structure the different types of knowl-
edge and discourse strategies in knowledge engin-
eering codes, so that the ES could, alternatively,
operate by simply responding to the user, by inter-
acting at the level required for the decision to take
place.
308
As a tutor to the inexpert, such a system would
help enhance skills. During interaction with the
system, the end user is given new specific (de-
tailed), or general information, particularly, when
the system detects an error in judgement or prob-
lem-solving. So it is possible for skill-enhancing
ESs to be produced and they would help to transfer
knowledge/expertise to the LDCs. Although by
using the above design paradigm, ESs will cost
more to develop, they will be more profitable in the
long term as they will satisfy both the users
(whether inexperienced or experienced) and the
organisations that introduced them.
Current research
Some of the current research projects to develop
human-centred, skill/expertise enhancing ESs
(which have positive implications for the LDCs as
aids for knowledge transfer) are presented by Ka-
ramjit Gill as follows:
1. The Greater London Enterprise Board
(GLEB) is working to produce an ES in the
medical domain that would "provide an interac-
tion between the 'facts of the domain' and the
fuzzy reasoning, tacit knowledge, imagination
and heuristics of the expert".
2. There is an EEC ESPRIT programme (on infor-
mation technology) (project 1217 (1199»which
is aiming to produce a human-centred CIM
(computer-integrated manufacturing) that
would enhance the skill of its users. Researchers
at the University of Bremen are developing an
educational programme which will focus on
both the production and reproduction ofknowl-
edge in such a way that the user/learner intro-
duces the socio-cultural contexts of the domain
knowledge in the interaction, thereby building
on his/her knowledge and that of the system.
3. At the SEAKE centre at Brighton Polytechnic
there are knowledge- based learning systems in
the areas of health care training for community
nurses and social workers working with minority
communities in London; social and communica-
tion skills for youths with learning difficulties;
and training volunteers working in developing
countries.
Each of these systems enables both the learner and
the teacher to acquire new knowledge by building
upon their own knowledge and skills. Also, the
domain knowledge and rules were built from the
practical experiences of the learners, while the
explanation/reasoning component of the systems
was based on the social and cultural views of the
learners and teachers.
4. At the Swedish Centre for Working Life there
are expert systems in nurse training which are
Science and Public Policy October 1991

designed to deal with the explicit and implicit
complexities of nursing skills.
5. The University of Bologna is working on an ES
for health care for the elderly by exploring the
concept of 'empathy' as the component of the
domain tacit knowledge and interpersonal com-
munication. The relationship between medical
practitioners and their patients is perceived in
social, cultural and religious terms, and the
knowledge which the learner and the expert
gain from each other during their interaction is
determined.
Conclusion
It has been asserted that ESs currently enable
inexpert performers to carry out tasks only experts
can otherwise undertake, but that they can also be
used as a vessel from which knowledge can be
transferred from experts in the DCs to inexperts or
lesser experts in the LDCs.
However, ESs (as presently designed) transfer
only explicit (concrete) knowledge; they do not
capture what has been called implicit, intrinsic or
tacit knowledge which is often inarticulable and
rooted in the socio-cultural framework and lan-
guage of the performer. Although ESs do capture
heuristic knowledge which experts describe as in-
tuitive, this is discrete and expressible.
One way ESs can help to enhance skill and so to
transfer expertise is to be able to work in a teacher
mode, in which the user carries out the problem-
solving, while the system 'stands at the user's
shoulder' to make sure that his/her mistakes and
shortcomings are corrected. The system can do this
by, for instance, providing the user with examples,
Science and Public Policy October 1991
ESs in knowledge transfer to LDCs
by helping in data retrieval, by providing annotated
information and case synopsis.
Also, the use of ESs in real life situations in the
LDCs and the visibility of the data and rules used
by the system will enable the user to perform more
proficiently. Whe.n ESs are designed to enhance
skills, they can enable inexperienced users to per-
form expertly and be able to master their domain
and acquire a tacit understanding of the area.
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